Cav's Place

Sunday I finally got around to reading the article about food insecurity in the United States published in this month’s edition of National Geographic and found it infuriating. That obviously wasn’t necessarily because this issue exists, but for a number of reasons starting from the fact that the cases depicted were of families with children, even with several children, and where children were usually also the most important part of the problem. I mean, the fact that people keep bringing children into this dreadfully overpopulated world is the main reason why resource shortages exist and then you expect me to feel sorry for those who face shortages after doing just that?
Still, this oddly enough won’t be a post about overpopulation. It won’t be about bad parenting either, even though ample evidence of that is provided by the mentions of children who refuse free school meals despite not having enough food at home and then still waste a part of what little they do have, or ask for and receive fast food from parents who claim to know it’s not healthy and can’t afford it either, or work hard to get themselves cool sneakers to match their parents’ flattering clothes, comfortable cars or the appliances bought on credit despite worrying about their next meal about half the time or even living in a homeless shelter. Instead, this post will be about the appallingly wrong choices that allow this problem to exist and even worsen in a country that, albeit at a completely unsustainable environmental cost, could currently eliminate it completely.

It’s difficult to say who is most at fault, so it’s equally difficult to know where to start and I was thinking to simply comment on the issues that stood out to me the most in the order they appear in the article itself, leaving the ones already mentioned above aside. However, that map of the “food deserts” in Houston, detailing the number and locations of households that are more than half a mile from a supermarket and don’t have a car, keeps nagging me. While probably not pointing out any of the worst causes, it seems to be such a succinct depiction of so many things that are terribly wrong that I simply have to start from it.
Look, I just used Google Maps to calculate the distance I cover when I walk to the hypermarket I prefer and the result was 3.3 kilometers, or just over two miles. It typically takes me 35 minutes, which is all the time I spend walking because on the way back I use the free transportation which some such major chains that operate here learned is worth offering, one of the routes dropping me off maybe some 50 meters or so from home. And yes, I could use it to get there as well, but unless the weather’s terrible I won’t even consider it. After all, that’s only some light exercise that most people could actually do with daily, not just weekly or however often one needs to visit such a store, so it’s utterly ludicrous for any person who’s in reasonable health and not too old to claim they’re in a “food desert” inside a city if they don’t have a supermarket within half a mile!
Sure, the weight of the purchases may be an issue on the way back, but a trolley cart can be an affordable and particularly useful investment in that case, plus that if you’re buying for the whole family, there may also be more people who could come and share that weight, so it should usually be manageable even if your only options are walking or cycling. Not that they should be, of course, but if they want stores to offer transportation like some do here, customers will need to prove that they’d rather not use their cars, and that plenty of them would choose a store that offers such a service, be it for free or for a modest fee, over one that doesn’t. And every city obviously needs to have reliable and affordable public transportation, including facilities for people with reduced mobility or carrying heavy items, but once again it won’t happen if the large majority of residents show that they prefer to drive everywhere instead of demanding, and then actually using, other methods to get around. Also, please note that I didn’t even take deliveries or asking friends or relatives for help into account.
Convenience tends to be an enemy of independence, and independence may often be a requirement for security, especially when it comes to resources. As such, while multiple factors, not least of which being the existing infrastructure, conspire to create and maintain this situation, people’s choices and behavior definitely play a major part. I mean, if you need another example see the part of the article about the home health aide who needs to drive all over the city to see her clients and often relies on premade food because she says she can’t go all the way home to cook, completely missing the fact that she could simply bring cooked food with her, and a small cooler to keep it from spoiling even on particularly hot days would pay for itself, especially if you also consider the health benefits.

It’s perfectly obvious that the less you can afford to buy or pay others to make for you, the more you need to obtain and make yourself, so the more independence you need. When it comes to food, this means growing, gathering, catching and cooking, and probably also setting up a local system based on exchanges between people who find themselves in a similar situation, whether out of need or out of the simple desire to control the way their basic needs are met. This may not work in the middle of an actual desert or some other similar area, but if you have a garden, no matter how small, or a balcony where you can place some pots, or a nearby forest where you can try to forage, there is definitely something you can do that will make a difference.
Thankfully, the article does give one good example when it comes to this, by mentioning a woman who dug two gardens in her yard, taught herself how to can food and forage for edible plants and generally ensures her family’s food security despite their meager income because she “makes procuring food her full-time job”. Unfortunately, the very next paragraph makes excuses for all the others who don’t do the same and instead possibly work multiple jobs that still don’t offer them sufficient money, so they end up eating on the run, choosing convenience over anything else and therefore relying on fast foods or processed foods regardless of their effects on health or even their price. That sort of behavior is wrong in more ways than one, and so is trying to justify it.
Worse, the next part of the article stresses this point regarding the prevalence of the wrong types of food by mentioning how “people in rural Iowa can be malnourished amid forests of cornstalks”, because that ends up on their plates in the form of meat from corn-fed animals or processed foods or drinks sweetened with corn syrup, even though one would think that, if you’re otherwise poor but have plenty of corn, you’d be eating plenty of corn, be it canned, boiled, foods based on cornmeal and whatever else you could directly make out of corn. I mean, there are plenty of other reasons why nutrition should be based on products that are as low on the food chain and as unprocessed as possible, whether we’re talking in terms of health, environmental impact or animal welfare, but nutritional value for the money is one of them, so the poor should normally strive for this even more than those who could afford anything they wanted.

It’s perfectly true that authorities, businesses and people who are better off also bear a large part of the blame, but the personal choices and priorities of those most affected clearly play a significant role in creating and maintaining this sad state of affairs. Not that reading such an article was needed to confirm this, of course, but seeing all the excuses for this behavior certainly proves that the problem runs far deeper and that tackling it from any angle will require significant changes in mentality and social framework.
Let’s start from the cars, which are supposedly “a necessity, not a luxury”, even though, for example, while writing this I sent someone a link to the article, mentioning the “food desert” part, and she was telling me that when she was little she was shopping from a hypermarket five kilometers away and one summer she was walking 16 kilometers, eight each way, to study, on a road with no sidewalks, staying on the side which allowed her to see the cars coming. Of course, nobody should find themselves in such a situation, and if they do then they’d do well to remember that bicycles exist as well, but if it’s between walking such a distance in those conditions and eating, or at least eating anything reasonably nutritious and healthy, the rational choice should be quite obvious and will eventually lead to solving the problem anyway, even if only because politicians will fear losing their positions otherwise.
And then you have all other elements of a painfully consumerist culture that’s overly concerned with maintaining a middle-class appearance in spite of poverty, starting with the decent houses and continuing with the comfortable clothes and toys, even if they’re purchased from discount stores or even yard sales, or the electronics bought on credit. Actually, I may say that then you have credit in general, as it’s mentioned several times during the article despite the fact that it only makes you pay more in the end and should therefore be avoided except in case of true emergencies, unless of course the purpose is an investment expected to result in a profit that will clearly exceed the interest rate.
To put it very bluntly, it’s like these people started by making a mess of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, placing obtaining others’ respect above health or finances above meeting basic physiological needs, and then added massive helpings of laziness, ignorance and plain stupidity on top. This article largely read as a list of bad examples, an inventory of choices and behavior patterns ranging from uninspired to absolutely terrible, and yet it seemed to intend to make the reader pity the people depicted and all the others like them. Why that would be, I honestly couldn’t say.

In fact, though I initially meant to also include comments about what the authorities are doing wrong, I’m going to end this post here. It got away from me anyway, considering how long it already is, but the point is that, with some rare exceptions like the one which was mentioned and then quickly brushed aside as too inconvenient for most, these people keep themselves in this situation and depicting their troubles in such a manner is a slap in the face for all those facing real hunger in so many other parts of the world, some of whom find themselves in that situation through no fault of their own. It’s infuriating, it’s downright sickening, and it most definitely should have never been published in these terms in a magazine like National Geographic… Not that I’m surprised that it was, of course, considering the idiotic reasoning behind this entire series of articles.